Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of American Youth (12th-Grade Survey), 2024

This survey of 12th-grade students is part of a series that explores changes in important values, behaviors, and lifestyle orientations of contemporary American youth. Students are randomly assigned to complete one of six questionnaires, each with a different subset of topical questions, but all containing a set of "core" questions on demographics and substance use. There are about 1,400 variables across the six questionnaires. Substance use covered by these surveys includes tobacco, smokeless tobacco, alcohol, marijuana/cannabis, prescription medications, over-the-counter medications, inhalants, steroids, LSD and other hallucinogens, amphetamines (stimulants), sedatives/barbiturates, tranquilizers, cocaine, crack cocaine, ecstasy, methamphetamine, heroin, narcotics other than heroin, and vaping of nicotine, marijuana/cannabis, and flavors. Other topics include attitudes toward religion, changing roles for women, educational aspirations, self-esteem, exposure to drug education, and violence and crime (both in and out of school).
Highlights for 2024:

The MTF sampling procedure was updated in 2024. Please see the 2024 MTF annual report for details. Variable-specific details are found in the user's guide that accompanies this study.
Continuation of randomized blocks of questions presented to students. Please see Appendix D of the user's guide.
In 2023, the question about use of Delta-8 THC was included only on forms 3 and 6. In 2024, this question is now included on all survey forms. With the inclusion on all forms, please note these variable name changes:
CORE: <strong>V2934</strong> was changed to <strong>V7976</strong>
Form 3: <strong>V3660</strong> was changed to <strong>V7976</strong>
Form 6: <strong>V6676</strong> was changed to <strong>V7976</strong>
Changes were made to the question stems for many of the substance use
"triplets", i.e. lifetime, 12 month, and 30 day timeframes, including:
marijuana/cannabis, hallucinogens other than LSD, amphetamines
(stimulants), sedatives/barbiturates, tranquilizers, and narcotics other than
heroin.
Additional information about question text and response option changes, along with details about added and dropped questions, are documented in the MTFQchanges2024byForm.pdf and MTFQchanges2024byType.pdf files available for download.
MTF is no longer providing dichotomized substance use variables on the DS1 datasets. As each researcher has their own method of working with data, it is up to the researcher to create these variables for their specific needs.